Making it in China: Obama vs. Romney - China's view

Through technology, many of the 'other billion' residents aware of the race, but not too concerned

Nov. 2, 2012

Rapid development and consumerism are the latest fads to hit Yongzhou, not to mention a keen interest in American politics. China's and America's futures are indelibly intertwined, yet 'China-bashing' still runs rampant in presidential campaign rhetoric. / Kirsten Jacobsen/Special to the Register

Written by

Kirsten Jacobsen

Special to the Register

While traveling through Jakarta this summer, I stumbled across the 'Obama Fans Club,' a mishmash of pride for the Indonesia-educated U.S. president, beer, and British football. (Unfortunately, when I visited it was too early in the afternoon to warrant 'serious' discussion of any of these matters.) / Kirsten Jacobsen/Special to The Register

KIRSTEN JACOBSEN, a former Des Moines Register reporter and a native Iowan, teaches school in Yongzhou, China, and writes about life in that country. Read her blog and see more photos at DesMoines Register.com/ Life.

At Yongzhou No. 4 High School, the blue book on the right is for political science. The book doesn't discuss American politics, but students learn about it on the Internet. / Kirsten Jacobsen/Special to the Register

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“The news said the other man will win,” said my student, Star, matter-of-factly, when I inquired over lunch one day as to whom she thought would win the 2012 presidential election in America.

Sieson, another student, nodded his head in agreement, while others around the table quietly murmured in opposition.

“Romney?” I queried. “Why is that?” I continued.

“Because he is more hard-working, successful and handsome. He won the … debate!” Star replied, after racking her mind a moment for the word in English. I didn’t tell her or Sieson that — at that point — there already had been two presidential debates with another on the way, or that their country was to be a major subject of the final one.

So how do China’s “other billion” — those outside the megacities of the moneyed, Westernized East Coast — see American politics, and how closely do they follow news of Tuesday’s election? With a similar “power transition” taking place in Beijing soon, I wanted to find out what the residents of my city, Yongzhou (think China’s Ames), thought when the subject came to Obama (“Ao ba ma”), Romney (“Luo mu ni”), and elections.

Yongzhou is a place free from incessant campaign ads, robo-calls from candidates, a place where joining a political party requires first an extensive knowledge of its background and policies.

In China, there are no cold-calls from canvassers, just the occasional wrong number (which can be equally exasperating when the person on the other end is in the mood to yell and redial incorrectly). The only “incessant campaign ad” is the nightly state-sanctioned news, which has become increasingly open to criticizing both domestic and foreign politics.

As for joining a party, there’s only one choice — the Chinese Communist Party (largest in the world with more than 60 million members) — and in lieu of checking a box on a voter registration card, prospective members undergo years of study and exams. (For those of you doing the math, you’ll note that this makes only around 23 percent of the population “card-carrying communists.”)

So what must the Chinese think about two-party elections, especially in our enviable, “superpower” nation halfway around the world? Do they know their country is continually used as both a McCarthy-esque scapegoat and an unbeatable economic bellwether in presidential campaigns?

“I seldom pay attention to (the election),” said Qin Liang, an interior designer in his mid-20s and a small business owner in Yongzhou. As a busy young professional in this developing city, he mentioned he would be worrying more about working overtime than watching the final presidential debate in real time.

“U.S. politics … some believe that it is good,” Qin said. This is an attitude many seem to share with him: Voting for one of two parties may be nice, but relying on one stable party has rocketed China into unprecedented levels of economic growth in recent decades. Why rock the boat when the seas have finally calmed?

There’s also a general reluctance to opine at length on something that cannot be known, a major cultural U-turn from the loud-mouthed political wonks and talking heads in America. (Or as Helen Gao put it in The Atlantic, the majority of Chinese people “typically choose to withhold their opinions for fear of “remafan” — causing trouble.”)

I took the liberty of asking the entirety of Class 441 (population: 74, about the same as Dolliver, Ia.), one of my more outspoken classes, whom they thought would win the election. Obama’s name recognition worked in his favor, winning him about three-fourths of the votes. Romney had one or two shy hands that immediately went down once they saw no one else agreed. The last two rows of the class either had no idea what I was talking about or cared about as much for politics as most American 16-year-olds.

However, China’s “netizen” population seems to feel more politically involved this year than ever before, screening the presidential debates in real-time and openly discussing everything from suits to snafus. During and immediately after the first presidential debate on Oct. 3, according to Lily Quo of “Quartz,” searching “U.S. presidential election” on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-esque microblogging website, returned 1.2 million hits. Searching for “Obama” returned just over 9 million, while searches for “Romney” brought up about 700,000 results. (These are good-sized numbers in a place where the “trending topics” are about as banal as those on Twitter.)

If “most favored nation” status were actually a high school popularity contest in China and throughout Asia, America would win it by a landslide. The current U.S. president — with incumbency on his side and a few years of life in Jakarta under his belt — has gained something of a populist rock star-status, especially in Indonesia. An unofficial poll done by correspondents with the Global Post found that if the entire world weighed in on this year’s presidential election, President Obama would win with 81 percent of the vote.

It also helps that Obama’s rhetoric on China is not as harsh or condemning as Gov. Romney’s statements about China being a “currency manipulator.”

“The presidential campaign reflects an alarming scenario in which China-bashing has become a ritual,” said an editorial by China’s Xinhua News Service following the second debate, placing blame on both parties. “This ritual, however, negatively impacts China-U.S. relations and leaves Americans with the impression that China is responsible for their country’s decline.”

One student, junior Zhu Jie Liang, was quick to point this out. “I think they are too critical of China,” he told me one afternoon. Zhu lamented that neither Obama nor Romney — whose name Zhu knew off the bat — would ever visit a place like Yongzhou to see how little these statements helped the Chinese people.

But perhaps “Simon,” an English teacher in his late 30s who has lived in Hunan province his whole life, summed up the Yongzhou-ian perspective of this year’s presidential election best: “The relationship between America and China can be tense … that is why many Chinese pay attention to (the election). But it is too close to know who can win,” he said one evening over dumplings.

“In China, a (party member) must prove he has earned a position or the people will not respect him as leader. Maybe it is the same in America.”